In this blog post series of 3 articles, our technical sales Tero Nurmi will tell you about the new EU regulations which will take part on 1st September 2021. In this blog series first Tero will tell you, what are these two different regulations: Single Lighting Regulation (SLR) and Energy Label Regulation (ELR). After that, Tero will go deeper into the subject of how this really affects the lighting industry.
What is ErP?
ErP is the abbreviation of Energy-related Products. It also refers to Energy-related Products Directive (ErP) 2009/125/EC that replaced the old Energy-using Products Directive (EuP) in November 2009. The original EuP was taken into use in 2005 to fulfill the Kioto agreement requirements for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
The ErP broadened the range of products that were covered in EuP. Earlier only directly energy-consuming (or using) products were covered. Now ErP directive also covers the products related to energy. This could be for example water-saving taps, etc.
The idea is to cover the whole product supply chain: design stage, production, transport, packaging, storage, etc.
Products that comply with this new ErP directive are recognized from CE -marking. In this case, the CE -mark covers product safety and energy efficiency requirements.
How this relates to lighting?
If we take the new directive, ErP EU 2019/2020, we can divide it into two groups concerning ecological design requirements:
- Light Sources
- Separate Control Gears
These requirements can also be applied to luminaires. The luminaires are so-called containing products that contain a light source(s) and control gear within the luminaire.
The development has gone further: now these ”ecodesign” principles are applied to the smallest possible units that can be considered as light sources. In this text, we do not go too much into details. I’ll explain everything more precisely in the further blog posts.
In December 2019, the European Commission published two different regulations: Single Lighting Regulation (SLR) and Energy Label Regulation (ELR). The former is also called Ecodesign Regulation for Lighting. SLR defines performance requirements, which are product-specific, for energy-using and energy-related products, while ELR includes labeling requirements for selling the products in the EU market.
There is a general state of mind that both these regulations, SLR and ELR, will apply from 1st September 2021.
SLR and ELR, and especially their application to LED light sources, will be handled more elaborately in forthcoming posts.
